Crap Happens! Book One: The Mistaken Manager
by Magentian
Summary: Lauren, Carl, Stevie and Mikey are decidedly not the Baudelaire siblings, as anyone can easily tell. They don't have a fortune, don't live in a mansion, and are, most certainly, not orphans. However, unfortunate events can happen to anyone... AU.


**CRAP HAPPENS!**

Before I begin this document, I must warn you of the terrible distress incumbent upon your person - a phrase which here means, "standing right behind you… oh no, LOOK OUT!" - if you continue to read this manuscript. Herein is contained a tale fraught with peril for both characters and reader … particularly if the reader in question hasclicked on this linkthinking it was some numbered installment of "A Series of Unfortunate Events," by Lemony Snicket. I am afraid I must inform you that, although there are many dreary, desolate and downright melancholy things in these pages, none of them - or, rather, few of them - are his. Please click the 'Back' button on your browser, go to your local library, and request Snicket's work if you have the inclination to read his work. Abandon all thoughts of continuing. Really. It's not worth it.

No? Then read on. (:chuckles: Sap.)

('Sap,' by the way, is a derogatory term for a person who is a few bricks short of a load - a phrase which has nothing to do with building materials, and which, if you do not know it,you should probably look up somewhere.)

Many unfortunate things, indeed, however, were about to happen to the characters in this particular tale, and although they had some resemblance to the incidents surrounding the Baudelaire siblings, they are affiliated in no way with them, or with Lemony Snicket. I am making no money from this. It is sad, but true. I write only for the truth. And perhaps a few small royalties once I pack my bags and move to Japan, where these sort of things are legal.

There are many ways in which the dissimilarities with the Baudelaires' tale is seen in this story, particularly in the opening scene thereof. Four siblings were frolicking at the edge of the ocean - there, you see? I have never known Baudelaires to frolic, and there were simply not four of them. There is nothing wrong with this story. As of yet.

As I say, four siblings were frolicking on the edge of the ocean. Their names, had you gone up and asked them,were nowhere near to beingKlaus, Violet, or Sunny. The tallest - although, hunched over as he was in the wet sand, it was hard to see this - was Carl. He was hunched over in the sand because he had just had a marvelous idea for a composition, and was quickly jotting it down. Carl did not like English compositions, or even sand compositions. He was a composer, which is a fancy name for a music-writer. Carl could play nearly any instrument, and at the moment he was involved in transposing, a very musician-y activity which is complicated and boring and makes the transposer stare out into space for minutes at a time counting intervals and doing many other unfathomable things. As such, Carl was very mysterious.

Rapidly approaching Carl, barreling across the sand with his belly jiggling like a separate entity, was Steve, who worked very hard within the family structure. Steve managed to be not only the middle child of the family, but also the baby. He talked in gibberish quite often, and generally got on everyone's nerves.

However, even Steve had his mature moments, when, instead of speaking gibberish, he would give it up and appear to display his intellect. This, of course, was his way of showing how good a liar he was, but it was a nice change every so often.

This, however, was not one of those rare moments of maturity. Steve bumped Carl directly in the back, knocking him face-first into the sand, and utterly ruining his notes and his concentration on musical theory.

Carl got up, very quickly. "STEVE!" he roared. "I swear, you are so… I'll…" Abandoning conversational skills for now, he tackled Steve, who went down, although unwillingly. The two formed a snarling, fighting mass, very inappropriate for teenage siblings, who by now should know better.

A third sibling, standing nearby shaking his head and probably wishing that Stevie had put a shirt on, stood still closer to the ocean. He had been skipping rocks and wishing for adventure when all this ruckus, a fancy word for 'boys acting silly, as usual,' had begun, and had turned around to watch, much to his regret and disgust. He was the youngest in the family, and his name was Mike, or, on occasion, Ike, after the popular candies, Mike and Ikes. Mike was both adventurous and prospective, a fancy way of saying he was always looking for money, and ways to make it. Mike skipped the rock out across the water, but it sank very quickly as it smacked a wave. He cast a glance at the fourth sibling, who was standing knee-deep in the ocean, with a woeful disregard for the state of her clothing. "You're lucky you missed that," he yelled, wading in a bit further so as to make himself heard better. "Carl and Steve are at it again."

He was, of course, conveniently forgetting that he, himself, often got into fights, sometimes with both of his siblings at once. The girl noted this, turning around with a grin. "As per the usual," she remarked, which is a fancy way of saying that she would not have expected anything less from these two. Lauren tended to use a lot of big words, and a lot of sarcasm, as well. Sarcasm, as used here, is anything that restates the obvious in an ironic or grumbling way. Like Lyme disease and rare toe fungus, it is hard to recognize unless you have run into it previously yourself.

Lauren, in yet another odd difference from the series mentioned at the start of this document, was not actually a sibling of Carl, Steve and Mike. They were standing at the seashore together because they were, in fact, neighbors. Lauren spent a good deal of time over at the brothers' house, getting what she simply referred to as her 'daily dose of chaos.' As an only child, Lauren was not normally acquainted with small spats, but they, and the brothers, entertained her and lifted the boredom of her otherwise-dull existence, and so she was practically the older sister of all three of the boys. In a while, she would find that at least one person was certain that she was in fact their sister, but that can wait until the proper time.

"Seriously," Mike said maturely, "I'm a whole lot more mature than either of them, aren't I?" As I think I have mentioned, Mike was the youngest, so he was acutely aware of the question of his maturity - a phrase which means he brought it up as often as possible, particularly when Carl was around, because Carl always pleaded a larger maturity factor when he was bossing everyone around.

"Yep," Lauren said. "Especially because if they were being a bit more mature, they would notice that random person walking straight towards us."

As the beach they were on was rather lonely and deserted - they had come there on vacation, but it was cloudy and not at all beach-visiting-type weather that day - a random person was big doin's, a phrase from Southwestern Pennsylvania which means, "Holy crap! Break out the kielbalsa and pierogies!" Lauren had thought that the person was probably Jim, the boys' father, come to smack one or both of them upside the head for being so silly and quarrelsome. However, as he drew closer, she realized she was wrong. She had never seen this person before in her life. Neither had Mike, but his thoughts were less on the person and more on the two in the sand.

"Boy're they gonna be embarrassed," he grinned happily, and walked out of the water. Lauren sighed and decided to approach the random stranger. After all, Terry, the boys' mother, had told her that she was in charge, and so it was her job to harass people as she saw fit, which meant whenever she wanted.

"Hey," she said casually to the absolute stranger, whom she saw to be a perfectly ordinary man dressed in business clothes. He was rather out of place on a beach.

The man started to cough into a white handkerchief, which is always a disconcerting reply to 'Hey,' although generally not one a person can help giving. Lauren looked at him in concern, wondering if he perhaps had tuberculosis, which is a disease marked by coughing. Stopping at last, he fidgeted a little. "Good afternoon," he said, his moustache, which she hadn't noticed before, twitching. "I… I'm afraid I don't know how to say this."

Lauren had an unpleasant prickling feeling on the back of her neck, as well you might if a random stranger was about to deliver a boatload of misery into your life. She raised an eyebrow. "Ummm… you're a bit too old for me," she decided finally, completely confused, but jumping to what turned out to be a bad conclusion.

Fortunately, the stranger had no sense of humor, and so he did not even think about what she had just said. He was busy twitching his moustache and crumpling his hat in his hands, and having another coughing fit, one of which had evidently finally caught the attention of Carl and Stevie, who stopped fighting at once and stood up, brushing sand out of their hair. "Can we help you?" Carl asked, stepping forward and taking charge immediately. The man looked up in surprise and a bit of consternation, meaning slight frustration at Carl's helpfulness, Carl's lack of understanding of his situation, or the distinct amount of sand in Carl's hair.

"No, you most certainly can't… but you are in dire need of help, I am afraid," he said at last. Dire need indicates that the children are actually somewhere hanging off of a cliff or failing at death-defying motorcycle jumps, instead of frolicking quite safely on a deserted beachfront, so this was particularly confusing. Mikey furrowed his brow, trying to understand.

"Who ARE you?" he asked finally, saving his next question, "And would you like to buy a bookmark?" for later.

The man gave him a strange look, punctuating it with a short cough. "Why, Klaus, don't you recognize me?"

Mikey countered with a strange look of his own. "Klaus? My name's Mike, and no, I certainly don't recognize you."

The man chose a more frustrated look this time, and for a few precious moments all the siblings thought that surely the man would turn away and go look for some other children to bother. However, destiny was not quite so kind, and he merely coughed a little more and stayed there, deciding, evidently, that the children were out of their minds.

"I am Mr. Poe," he set himself to explaining finally, and a bit slowly and simply so they could understand. "I am your parents' financial guardian. I have been taking care of your parents' fortune for years."

Mike's face lit up, as did Carl's and Steve's, quite understandably. "We're _rich_?" Mike asked wonderingly.

"And Mom and Dad made all that fuss about paying for bass lessons!" Carl said, rolling his eyes, still quite amazed. The bass is a large stringed instrument, something like a violin that has gone and bred itself with an elephant. It also happened to be Carl's favorite instrument, and he devoted nearly all his time to playing it. At the moment, however, it was sunning itself next to Terry and Jim, who were near the family van.

Mr. Poe fidgeted and coughed again. "That's the thing," he said reluctantly, which means with great slowness and not very much enthusiasm. "I've come here to tell you your parents… well, they're dead."

"What?" all the children shouted.

"You do know they're right over there, don't you?" Steve asked, opting for some semblance of common sense, and he grabbed Mr. Poe's shoulder and pointed in the direction of the beach umbrella.

However, unfortunately for Stevie, and like so many of his other exploits into legible sentence structure - a phrase which here means 'just as usually occurred when he decided to stop dancing around and chanting "I'm a cucumber!"' -he was lying. Terry and Jim were nowhere to be seen. The van was there, as was the big bass, sunning itself next to a nice martini, but there were no parents in sight. Mr. Poe saw this, and drew the children closer to him, beginning to walk down the seashore.

"I know, it's hard to believe, and it may feel at first that they are right there," he said, "but I have it on good word that they are, in fact, gone. Your entire mansion perished in a huge fire. They were trapped inside it. I'm horribly sorry, but that's the way things are."

Everyone blinked several times at this. It was hard to believe, to be sure, and he sounded sincere, but it certainly was not hard to believe in the way that he seemed to think.

"So let me get this straight," Mike said dubiously, fortunately for Lauren and Carl, who were almost beginning to believe the man's strange story. He ticked the points off on his fingers. "Our parents are rich and never told us. We lived in a mansion and never knew it. And now they're dead, when they really probably just went behind the van to get out some more sunscreen." He scowled at Mr. Poe. "Are you sure you haven't got the wrong kids?"

"I'm positive you children are the right ones!" he cried. "Look, it's right here -" and, amidst yet another coughing fit, he brought out a piece of paper, the reflection of the sunlight which was just breaking through the clouds fairly blazing on its surface. Mr. Poe shaded his eyes with his handkerchief. "I'm afraid I've lost my reading glasses, but you're there all the same." The children, alarmed by his frequent coughing, had drawn back to prevent catching whatever illness he was undoubtedly getting all over the handkerchief, and so by the time they had gotten close enough to glance at the portraits, he had tucked it away again. Still, there was something they did have time to note.

"There were only three children in that picture," Carl said, and the siblings heard immediately the tone of glee in his voice that signified a circular argument was coming up. Carl adored circular arguments almost as much as music.

"No, there were four," Mr. Poe said decisively, "and they looked exactly like you."

"No, they didn't, because there were three of them," Carl said.

Mr. Poe sighed. "Look, I would adore standing around and talking about this for quite a few more hours, but unfortunately" - another coughing fit - "I have a schedule to meet. As I think I've mentioned, I am a manager for Muluctuary Money Management, and I have more valuable things to do than converse all day with children. Now, come with me, please - I'll be in charge of your affairs, and until suitable guardians can be found for you children, you'll have to live with me instead. I assure you, it is only temporary." The tone in his voice was firm, but it still did not change the incredulous - a word which here means, 'Very, very surprised, because they are neither rich nor orphaned' - expressions on the children's faces. Lauren summoned her courage, hoping to avoid kidnapping. After all, she was the appointed guardian for all her siblings. It was a crucial moment.

"We are going nowhere with you," she said, glaring fiercely at Mr. Poe, and letting her mind slip into quite a few inhumane thoughts of what she would like to do to this strange potential abductor, most of which involved liquid nitrogen and straws. Lauren could be very inventive when she had to.

Unfortunately, the beach was lacking in either nitrogen or straws, and, although any of the three brothers, particularly Stevie, could testify well to the fact that she was very scary when mad, Lauren's dirty looks did nothing to get rid of Mr. Poe's feeling that he had had enough. He coughed a few particularly bossy times into his handkerchief, and then said hoarsely but finally, "Clearly, you children are delusional with grief…" He sighed angrily. "I can only spare a few more moments, and then I absolutely must get back to the bank! You may go over to the van and check, but I assure you your parents are not there, nor did they ever drive a car like that! Now please, when you come back, would you all be civil for once and come with me!"

The siblings exchanged a look as the oddly dressed man had yet another coughing fit. Taking advantage of a good thing, they all turned at once and nearly dashed to the van. All four of them heartily expected to see their parents - or, in Lauren's case, their neighbors' parents - alive and well and looking for the cooler. But this was where yet another frightening and unnatural circumstance conspired against them, driving them yet onwards toward their grievous mistaken identity.

"Where did they go?" Lauren asked helplessly, for all the children could see clearly that, despite their certainty, their parents were nowhere in sight. Not only were they not around the car, they were not inside of it, or anywhere on the horizon. Terry and Jim had disappeared, just as Mr. Poe said. As paranoia - a word which, used here, means 'wondering if Mr. Poe perhaps had something to do with this' - kicked in, she began to wonder if Mr. Poe perhaps had something to do with this. He didn't, as a matter of fact - they had only gone over a dune to see to a man who had gotten sand in his gas tank, which is also very unfortunate - but there was, of course, no way of knowing this.

An uncomfortable silence followed, punctuated by Mr. Poe's coughing, and a sharp, "Are you all ready yet?"

Lauren looked at Mikey, and Mikey looked at Carl, and Carl looked at Steve, who, for once, was not capering or singing 'I'm a cucumber' or making up intelligent lies or even smiling at all. They were not ready, not at all, but it appeared that at last, the grand adventure Mikey had been wishing for had arrived.


End file.
